G.R. No.

1051

May 19, 1903

THE UNITED STATES, complainant-appellee,

vs.
FRED L. DORR, ET AL., defendants-appellants.
F.
G.
Waite
for
appellants.
Solicitor-General Araneta for appellee.
LADD, J.:
The defendants have been convicted upon a
complaint charging them with the offense of
writing, publishing, and circulating a scurrilous
libel against the Government of the United States
and the Insular Government of the Philippine
Islands. The complaint is based upon section 8 of
Act No. 292 of the Commission, which is as
follows:
Every person who shall utter seditious words
or speeches, write, publish, or circulate
scurrilous libels against the Government of the
United States or the Insular Government of the
Philippine Islands, or which tend to disturb or
obstruct any lawful officer in executing his
office, or which tend to instigate others to
cabal or meet together for unlawful purposes,
or which suggest or incite rebellious
conspiracies or riots, or which tend to stir up
the people against the lawful authorities, or to
disturb the peace of the community, the safety
and order of the Government, or who shall
knowingly conceal such evil practices, shall be
punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand
dollars or by imprisonment not exceeding two
years, or both, in the discretion of the court.
The alleged libel was published as an editorial in
the issue of the "Manila Freedom" of April 6,
1902, under the caption of "A few hard facts."
The Attorney-General in his brief indicates the
following passages of the article as those upon
which he relies to sustain the conviction:

Sidney Adamson, in a late letter in "Leslie's

Weekly," has the following to say of the action
of the Civil Commission in appointing rascally
natives to important Government positions:
"It is a strong thing to say, but nevertheless
true, that the Civil Commission, through its
ex-insurgent office holders, and by its
continual disregard for the records of natives
obtained during the military rule of the
Islands, has, in its distribution of offices,
constituted a protectorate over a set of men
who should be in jail or deported. . . .
[Reference is then made to the appointment
of one Tecson as justice of the peace.] This
is the kind of foolish work that the
Commission is doing all over the Islands,
reinstating insurgents and rogues and
turning down the men who have during the
struggle, at the risk of their lives, aided the
Americans."
xxx xxx xxx
There is no doubt but that the Filipino office
holders of the Islands are in a good many
instances rascals.
xxx xxx xxx
The commission has exalted to the highest
positions in the Islands Filipinos who are
alleged to be notoriously corrupt and rascally,
and men of no personal character.
xxx xxx xxx
Editor Valdez, of "Miau," made serious charges
against two of the native Commissioners
charges against Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera,
which, if true, would brand the man as a coward
and a rascal, and with what result? . . . [Reference
is then made to the prosecution and conviction of
Valdez for libel "under a law which specifies that
the greater the truth the greater the libel."] Is it the
desire of the people of the United States that the

natives against whom these charges have been

made (which, if true, absolutely vilify their
personal characters) be permitted to retain their
seats on the Civil Commission, the executive body
of the Philippine Government, without an
investigation?
xxx xxx xxx
It is a notorious fact that many branches of the
Government organized by the Civil
Commission are rotten and corrupt. The fiscal
system, upon which life, liberty, and justice
depends, is admitted by the Attorney-General
himself to be most unsatisfactory. It is a fact
that the Philippine judiciary is far from being
what it should. Neither fiscals nor judges can
be persuaded to convict insurgents when they
wish to protect them.
xxx xxx xxx
Now we hear all sorts of reports as to
rottenness existing in the province [of
Tayabas], and especially the northern end of it;
it is said that it is impossible to secure the
conviction of lawbreakers and outlaws by the
native justices, or a prosecution by the native
fiscals.
xxx xxx xxx
The long and short of it is that Americans will
not stand for an arbitrary government,
especially when evidences of carpetbagging
and rumors of graft are too thick to be
pleasant.
We do not understand that it is claimed that the
defendants succeeded in establishing at the trial the
truth of any of the foregoing statements. The only
question which we have considered is whether
their publication constitutes an offense under
section 8 of Act No. 292, above cited.

Several allied offenses or modes of committing the

same offense are defined in that section, viz: (1)
The uttering of seditious words or speeches; (2) the
writing, publishing, or circulating of scurrilous
libels against the Government of the United States
or the Insular Government of the Philippine
Islands; (3) the writing, publishing, or circulating
of libels which tend to disturb or obstruct any
lawful officer in executing his office; (4) or which
tend to instigate others to cabal or meet together
for unlawful purposes; (5) or which suggest or
incite rebellious conspiracies or riots; (6) or which
tend to stir up the people against the lawful
authorities or to disturb the peace of the
community, the safety and order of the
Government; (7) knowingly concealing such evil
practices.
The complaint appears to be framed upon the
theory that a writing, in order to be punishable as a
libel under this section, must be of a scurrilous
nature and directed against the Government of the
United States or the Insular Government of the
Philippine Islands, and must, in addition, tend to
some one of the results enumerated in the section.
The article in question is described in the
complaint as "a scurrilous libel against the
Government of the United States and the Insular
Government of the Philippine Islands, which tends
to obstruct the lawful officers of the United States
and the Insular Government of the Philippine
Islands in the execution of their offices, and which
tends to instigate others to cabal and meet together
for unlawful purposes, and which suggests and
incites rebellious conspiracies, and which tends to
stir up the people against the lawful authorities,
and which disturbs the safety and order of the
Government of the United States and the Insular
Government of the Philippine Islands." But it is "a
well-settled rule in considering indictments that
where an offense may be committed in any of
several different modes, and the offense, in any
particular instance, is alleged to have been
committed in two or more modes specified, it is
sufficient to prove the offense committed in any
one of them, provided that it be such as to

constitute
the
substantive
offense"
(Com. vs. Kneeland, 20 Pick., Mass., 206, 215),
and the defendants may, therefore, be convicted if
any one of the substantive charges into which the
complaint may be separated has been made out.
We are all, however, agreed upon the proposition
that the article in question has no appreciable
tendency to "disturb or obstruct any lawful officer
in executing his office," or to "instigate" any
person or class of persons "to cabal or meet
together for unlawful purposes," or to "suggest or
incite rebellious conspiracies or riots," or to "stir
up the people against the lawful authorities or to
disturb the peace of the community, the safety and
order of the Government." All these various
tendencies, which are described in section 8 of Act
No. 292, each one of which is made an element of
a certain form of libel, may be characterized in
general terms as seditious tendencies. This is
recognized in the description of the offenses
punished by this section, which is found in the title
of the act, where they are defined as the crimes of
the "seditious utterances, whether written or
spoken."
Excluding from consideration the offense of
publishing "scurrilous libels against the
Government of the United States or the Insular
Government of the Philippine Islands," which may
conceivably stand on a somewhat different footing,
the offenses punished by this section all consist in
inciting, orally or in writing, to acts of disloyalty
or disobedience to the lawfully constituted
authorities in these Islands. And while the article in
question, which is, in the main, a virulent attack
against the policy of the Civil Commission in
appointing natives to office, may have had the
effect of exciting among certain classes
dissatisfaction with the Commission and its
measures, we are unable to discover anything in it
which can be regarded as having a tendency to
produce anything like what may be called
disaffection, or, in other words, a state of feeling
incompatible with a disposition to remain loyal to
the Government and obedient to the laws. There

can be no conviction, therefore, for any of the

offenses described in the section on which the
complaint is based, unless it is for the offense of
publishing a scurrilous libel against the
Government of the of the United States or the
Insular Government of the Philippine Islands.
Can the article be regarded as embraced within the
description of "scurrilous libels against the
Government of the United States or the Insular
Government of the Philippine Islands?" In the
determination of this question we have
encountered great difficulty, by reason of the
almost entire lack of American precedents which
might serve as a guide in the construction of the
law. There are, indeed, numerous English
decisions, most of them of the eighteenth century,
on the subject of libelous attacks upon the
"Government, the constitution, or the law
generally," attacks upon the Houses of Parliament,
the Cabinet, the Established Church, and other
governmental organisms, but these decisions are
not now accessible to us, and, if they were, they
were made under such different conditions from
those which prevail at the present day, and are
founded upon theories of government so foreign to
those which have inspired the legislation of which
the enactment in question forms a part, that they
would probably afford but little light in the present
inquiry. In England, in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, any "written censure upon
public men for their conduct as such," as well as
any written censure "upon the laws or upon the
institutions of the country," would probably have
been regarded as a libel upon the Government. (2
Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England,
348.) This has ceased to be the law in England, and
it is doubtful whether it was ever the common law
of any American State. "It is true that there are
ancient dicta to the effect that any publication
tending to "possess the people with an ill opinion
of the Government" is a seditious libel ( per Holt,
C. J., in R. vs. Tuchin, 1704, 5 St. Tr., 532, and
Ellenborough, C. J., in R. vs. Cobbett, 1804, 29
How. St. Tr., 49), but no one would accept that
doctrine now. Unless the words used directly tend

to foment riot or rebellion or otherwise to disturb

the peace and tranquility of the Kingdom, the
utmost latitude is allowed in the discussion of all
public affairs." (11 Enc. of the Laws of England,
450.) Judge Cooley says (Const. Lim., 528): "The
English common law rule which made libels on the
constitution or the government indictable, as it was
administered by the courts, seems to us unsuited to
the condition and circumstances of the people of
America, and therefore never to have been adopted
in the several States."
We find no decisions construing the Tennessee
statute (Code, sec. 6663), which is apparently the
only existing American statute of a similar
character to that in question, and from which much
of the phraseology of then latter appears to have
been taken, though with some essential
modifications.
The important question is to determine what is
meant in section 8 of Act No. 292 by the
expression "the Insular Government of the
Philippine Islands." Does it mean in a general and
abstract sense the existing laws and institutions of
the Islands, or does it mean the aggregate of the
individuals by whom the government of the
Islands is, for the time being, administered? Either
sense would doubtless be admissible.
We understand, in modern political science, . . . by
the term government, that institution or aggregate
of institutions by which an independent society
makes and carries out those rules of action which
are unnecessary to enable men to live in a social
state, or which are imposed upon the people
forming that society by those who possess the
power or authority of prescribing them.
Government is the aggregate of authorities which
rule a society. By "dministration, again, we
understand in modern times, and especially in
more or less free countries, the aggregate of those
persons in whose hands the reins of government
are for the time being (the chief ministers or heads
of departments)." (Bouvier, Law Dictionary, 891.)
But the writer adds that the terms "government"

and "administration" are not always used in their

strictness, and that "government" is often used for
"administration."
In the act of Congress of July 14, 1798, commonly
known as the "Sedition Act," it is made an offense
to "write, print, utter, or published," or to
"knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing,
printing, uttering, or publishing any false,
scandalous, and malicious writing or writings
against the Government of the United States, or
either House of the Congress of the United States,
or the President of the United States, with intent to
defame the said Government, or either House of
the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring
them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute,
or to excite against them or either or any of them
the hatred of the good people of the United States,"
etc. The term "government" would appear to be
used here in the abstract sense of the existing
political system, as distinguished from the concrete
organisms of the Government the Houses of
Congress and the Executive which are also
specially mentioned.
Upon the whole, we are of the opinion that this is
the sense in which the term is used in the
enactment under consideration.
It may be said that there can be no such thing as a
scurrilous libel, or any sort of a libel, upon an
abstraction like the Government in the sense of the
laws and institutions of a country, but we think an
answer to this suggestion is that the expression
"scurrilous libel" is not used in section 8 of Act
No. 292 in the sense in which it is used in the
general libel law (Act No. 277) that is, in the
sense of written defamation of individuals but
in the wider sense, in which it is applied in the
common law to blasphemous, obscene, or seditious
publications in which there may be no element of
defamation whatever. "The word 'libel' as
popularly used, seems to mean only defamatory
words; but words written, if obscene,
blasphemous, or seditious, are technically called
libels, and the publication of them is, by the law of

England,
an
indictable
offense."
(Bradlaugh vs. The Queen, 3 Q. B. D., 607, 627,
per Bramwell L. J. See Com. vs. Kneeland, 20
Pick., 206, 211.)
While libels upon forms of government,
unconnected with defamation of individuals, must
in the nature of things be of uncommon
occurrence, the offense is by no means an
imaginary one. An instance of a prosecution for an
offense
essentially
of
this
nature
is
Republica vs. Dennie, 4 Yeates (Pa.), 267, where
the defendant was indicted "as a factious and
seditious person of a wicked mind and unquiet and
turbulent disposition and conversation, seditiously,
maliciously, and willfully intending, as much as in
him lay, to bring into contempt and hatred the
independence of the United States, the constitution
of this Commonwealth and of the United States, to
excite popular discontent and dissatisfaction
against the scheme of polity instituted, and upon
trial in the said United States and in the said
Commonwealth, to molest, disturb, and destroy the
peace and tranquility of the said United States and
of the said Commonwealth, to condemn the
principles of the Revolution, and revile, depreciate,
and scandalize the characters of the Revolutionary
patriots and statesmen, to endanger, subvert, and
totally destroy the republican constitutions and free
governments of the said United States and this
Commonwealth, to involve the said United States
and this Commonwealth in civil war, desolation,
and anarchy, and to procure by art and force a
radical change and alteration in the principles and
forms of the said constitutions and governments,
without the free will, wish, and concurrence of the
people of the said United States and this
Commonwealth, respectively," the charge being
that "to fulfill, perfect, and bring to effect his
wicked, seditious, and detestable intentions
aforesaid he . . . falsely, maliciously, factiously,
and seditiously did make, compose, write, and
publish the following libel, to wit; 'A democracy is
scarcely tolerable at any period of national history.
Its omens are always sinister and its powers are
unpropitious. With all the lights or experience

blazing before our eyes, it is impossible not to

discover the futility of this form of government. It
was weak and wicked at Athens, it was bad in
Sparta, and worse in Rome. It has been tried in
France and terminated in despotism. it was tried in
England and rejected with the utmost loathing and
abhorrence. It is on its trial here and its issue will
be civil war, desolation, and anarchy. No wise man
but discerns its imperfections; no good man but
shudders at its miseries; no honest man but
proclaims its fraud, and no brave man but draws
his sword against its force. The institution of a
scheme of polity so radically contemptible and
vicious is a memorable example of what the
villainy of some men can devise, the folly of others
receive, and both establish, in despite of reason,
reflection, and sensation.'"
An attack upon the lawfully established system of
civil government in the Philippine Islands, like that
which Dennie was accused of making upon the
republican form of government lawfully
established in the United States and in the State of
Pennsylvania would, we think, if couched in
scandalous language, constitute the precise offense
described in section 8 of Act No. 292 as a
scurrilous libel against the Insular Government of
the Philippine Islands.
Defamation of individuals, whether holding
official positions or not, and whether directed to
their public conduct or to their private life, may
always be adequately punished under the general
libel law. Defamation of the Civil Commission as
an aggregation, it being "a body of persons definite
and small enough for its individual members to be
recognized as such" (Stephen, Digest of the
Criminal Law, art. 277), as well as defamation of
any of the individual members of the Commission
or of the Civil Governor, either in his public
capacity or as a private individual, may be so
punished. The general libel law enacted by the
Commission was in force when Act No. 292, was
passed. There was no occasion for any further
legislation on the subject of libels against the
individuals by whom the Insular Government is

administered against the Insular Government in

the sense of the aggregate of such individuals.
There was occasion for stringent legislation against
seditious words or libels, and that is the main if not
the sole purpose of the section under consideration.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that the
Commission, in enacting this section, may have
conceived of attacks of a malignant or scurrilous
nature upon the existing political system of the
United States, or the political system established in
these Islands by the authority of the United States,
as necessarily of a seditious tendency, but it is not
so reasonable to suppose that they conceived of
attacks upon the personnel of the government as
necessarily tending to sedition. Had this been their
view it seems probable that they would, like the
framers of the Sedition Act of 1798, have
expressly and specifically mentioned the various
public officials and collegiate governmental bodies
defamation of which they meant to punish as
sedition.
The article in question contains no attack upon the
governmental system of the United States, and it is
quite apparent that, though grossly abusive as

respects both the Commission as a body and some

of its individual members, it contains no attack
upon the governmental system by which the
authority of the United States is enforced in these
Islands. The form of government by a Civil
Commission and a Civil Governor is not assailed.
It is the character of the men who are intrusted
with the administration of the government that the
writer is seeking to bring into disrepute by
impugning the purity of their motives, their public
integrity, and their private morals, and the wisdom
of their policy. The publication of the article,
therefore, no seditious tendency being apparent,
constitutes no offense under Act No. 292, section
8.
The judgment of conviction is reversed and the
defendants are acquitted, with costs de oficio.
Arellano, C.J.
JJ., concur.

Torres,

Willard

and

Mapa,